Live Action Murder Mystery

Chapter 78.1

(An old friend enters my dream, proof of my longing memory)

The oddities outside the window continued.

But it was nothing more than the snow, moon, and sun going through a cycle and switching.

“Ding dong.”

The public broadcast abruptly rang out.

“Friendly reminder, all the players can go closer to the window to observe the oddities outside.

“Additionally, there is still half an hour left to the end of the investigation segment. Please make the best use of your time.

“Half an hour later, let us meet in the centralised discussion room!”

After the broadcast landed, Gu Liang directed his gaze outside the window again.

Quite evidently, the phenomena happening outside the window was an explicit hint directed towards the players.

This hint conformed with Gu Liang’s assumptions.

But there was a crucial point that Gu Liang believed he had yet to grasp.

— Where is that crucial point?

Li Xiao Yu, who was also looking outside the window, suddenly spoke up at that moment: “What are these scenes trying to suggest? Snowing for a time, having a sun for a while, then out with the moon… it’s too illogical, it’s even worse than the dreams that I have.”

Dream?

Yes, that’s right.

Perhaps this is actually a dream.

The jumping scenes, seemingly illogical at first glance, which required deeper and more penetrating insight to find the pulling force before they could see the hidden relation between the various objects.

It was a dream.

At the very beginning, Gu Liang merely thought that this ancient castle was a fantasy that the Duke created in reality.

But if they were to observe from a pure fantasy perspective, this entire story and some details could not be explained.

Li Xiao Yu’s unintentional words made Gu Liang realise— Certainly, if the fantasy was corrected into a dreamscape, a lot of things would have a proper explanation.

Breathing out a sigh, Gu Liang told Li Xiao Yu: “Xiao Yu, you’ve solved a huge problem. This is a dreamscape. We’re in the Duke’s dream.”

After saying that, Gu Liang walked over to Yang Ye’s side. “There’s only half an hour left, let’s act separately. You can bring the rest to your room and investigate in accordance with the speculations we previously discussed. In any case, you’ve always been good at restoring the exact details of the crime. I need to make another trip to the Magician’s room and the Duke’s room.”

“Sure. See you in half an hour.” Yang Ye said.

“Mn.” Gu Liang waved his hand at him before he sprinted out first. “See you in half an hour.”

* * *

While everyone had conducted a search in Scumbag Yu’s room in different instances, they mostly focused on the bedroom and the bathroom.

This time around, everyone laid their eyes on the neglected balcony.

Presently, the oddities in the sky seemed to have stopped for the time being.

The skies and earth resumed its darkness once more.

Hence, everyone still had to borrow the light from their flashlights to search the area bit by bit, and after looking around for a while, they finally found some clues&#k2014; there was some blood on the ceramic tiles at the side of the balcony.

It was not difficult to guess what might have occurred.

Hence, together with the rest of the players, Yang Ye immediately went downstairs and walked out of the ancient castle’s main entrance to wind around the outer walls until they reached the ground that was facing Scumbag Yu’s room balcony directly— As they had expected, there was some blood too.

However, the volume of blood was almost negligible; even after they used their flashlights to shine around for a long time, they only managed to find a few specks of blood.

Chief Mei could not help but ask Yang Ye: “You killed someone on the balcony and pushed them down?”

“That’s not right.” Yang Ye said, “All of us have checked the two corpses. There are no injuries on the back of their head or anywhere on their bodies, which also means to say that they don’t have any injuries that were inflicted by fall damage on their bodies. Am I right to say that? Furthermore, if I really pushed someone off the sixth floor, there shouldn’t be so little blood.”

Yang Ye used his flashlight to point at the small specks of blood, saying, “This little blood should have trickled out from the wound in his chest. This only suggests that he’s been here before.”

Chief Mei raised his head to gaze at Scumbag Yu’s balcony on the sixth floor. “It’s not like he could have jumped down on his own.”

Yang Ye: “That’s hard to say. If this really is a dreamscape, everything is possible.”

Chief Mei pushed his hands. “Since everything is possible, not bleeding from the fall damage after you threw down the corpse is also a possibility.”

Despite being accused like this, Yang Ye was rather calm as he said: “This dreamscape is most definitely not just a dreamscape, since it was folded together with reality. Consequently, all the matters that have occurred can’t just be a product of the wildest imaginations with no traces availed to us. Or else, there would be no logical basis to our case solving at all. And with regards to how this dreamscape was constructed, we still need to refer to the clues that Gu Liang is looking for on his end. Therefore, discussing all of this has no meaning right now, so let’s look for the clues first.”

Just as Yang Ye finished saying those words, Li Xiao Yu’s voice travelled over from her side.

She had been lying prone in the underbrush, uncaring of how much dirt would stain her body and face.

At that moment, she simultaneously raised her soiled and dirtied face and a room card, saying: “I feel like this item is very important!”

Upon moving closer to take the card and shining his flashlight on it, Yang Ye discovered that it was the all-purpose card he had previously seen in the butler’s room.

In the instant where flint struck iron, Yang Ye made sense of a critical detail and he could not resist giving Li Xiao Yu a word of praise. “Your performance today is simply splendid. This card is very, very important.”

After receiving the card, Yang Ye used his flashlight to illuminate the area in front of him.

He pushed aside the clusters of shrubs and ventured inside. “Come on, let’s check to see if there’s blood on this path, and where it leads to.”

Thus, the group continued their search with the flashlights, and sure enough, they found more blood traces along the road.

As they continued to follow the path, the place that they finally arrived at was that sunflower garden.

* * *

The remaining half-hour for the exploration came to an end.

The centralised discussion officially began.

The broadcast sounded punctually.

“In the 《 Folding Ancient Castle 》scenario, the slow and long exploration time has come to an end, and the final segment of centralised discussion will be commencing. Players, are you as excited as I am?

“Because all the players are being suspected, there is no designated detective in this case. Players can voluntarily elect a member to lead the discussion, and decide on the flow of the discussion on your own. Everyone is allowed to conduct a centralised discussion and use the one-on-one interrogation room or their own personal resting lounges to conduct a private discussion.

“Since there is no detective, will there be no consequences for casting the wrong votes?

“Players, never harbour such wishful thinking oh.

“The ancient castle’s owner, our great Lord Duke, is extremely thankful for the fact that everyone helped him find the real murderer that killed his wife. But the Lord Duke had a regret that lasted for 300 years in his heart, and a cherished desire he had hoped to fulfil for 300 years! Unfortunately, our murderer has cruelly destroyed everything!

“If the players fail to find the real murderer, and fail to find the person who destroyed everything, [The Duke’s Wrath] will be triggered. In the instant where the sun rises again, all of you will trapped in this ancient castle forever and ever, until you die.

“Only by finding the correct murderer, will all of you be truly absolved.”

Previously, it was either the murderer died or the detective died together with the incarcerated good person.

Under those circumstances, there were people who fished in troubled waters among the good persons. In any case, the worst consequence of voting correctly or incorrectly was losing their rewards at most, they would not be greatly affected.

This time around, the murderer was in a direct confrontation with everyone else; it was an ending where only one party would come out alive.

Hence, after the rules and regulations were read out loud, all the players inside the centralised discussion room had slightly heavy expressions.

Chief Mei could not restrain himself from standing up and looked at Gu Liang first. He asked with palpable anxiety: “With regards to that dreamscape theory, do you have any basis for it? Can you confirm? Did you find anything in the Magician’s room?”

In front of Gu Liang was a disorderly stack of books and various diaries.

Presently, his head was lowered as he continued to flip through the pages.

Upon hearing Chief Mei’s words, he raised his head and told Chief Mei: “I haven’t found the most crucial piece of information and I require a little more time. There’s way too many books here.”

At the side, Yang Ye absorbed Gu Liang’s reaction into his retinas.

He came to the abrupt realisation that he could actually tell if Gu Liang was speaking the truth.

Gu Liang’s body was a little tense, there was the emergence of faint green veins on his neck but a tinge of redness belied his skin.

It was the bodily reaction he would show when he was slightly enthused. It indicated that he must have discovered something of paramount importance.

It was just that he was choosing not to vocalise it for the time being, lest he attracted the real murderer’s vigilance.

Gu Liang merely said: “But the fact that we’ve been set up in a dreamscape is definitive. I can tell everyone the basis of my current conjecture first. For full disclosure, it mainly hinges on the issue that everyone’s memories are in disarray and that they are unafraid of light.”

Gu Liang looked towards Su Lan: “Su Lan, you remember that you have murderous intentions towards Aimeili. However, you don’t remember if you have ever acted against her, and you don’t remember that you went to look for Aimeili twice that day and what you said, right?”

Su Lan nodded. “Mn. I’m not lying.”

Gu Liang: “Yes, you didn’t lie. It’s because the Duke himself is unaware of what the real Princess Rose told Aimeili that day. You are merely the Princess Rose that exists in his dream.

“The Duke created a dreamscape, and his daughter Princess Rose was inside his dreamscape. In that dream, the Princess Rose that you are being, was a construct of the Duke’s memories of the real Princess Rose and his imaginings. But in reality, there are a lot of things about Princess Rose that he isn’t privy to. For example, after reading through Princess Rose’s diary, he learnt that she had murderous intentions towards Aimeili, but whether she acted against her in the end is not something he is aware of.

“Additionally, there is the matter of being afraid of light. I reckon that because the Duke himself is too powerful, it has reached a point where he had forgotten that vampires are afraid of light. When he was designing all the characters, the essential factor of fearing light wasn’t among his considerations.

“Hence, in the diaries of the real Princess Rose and their servants, they were clearly afraid of light but as the Princess Rose of his dreams, Su Lan didn’t know that she was afraid of light from the beginning to the end.

“Additionally, let’s digress to the matter of Princess Rose killing the chef for a moment. There are gravestones by the lake and everyone should have seen them when they were searching for evidence. One of the gravestones wrote that Princess Rose had previously killed a chef.

“The cruel Duke killed countless people, and he only kept that human chef alive because the food he made was too delicious. This matter probably left a deep impression on the Duke. Therefore, in that segment, he merely dreamt of that matter.

“When this scenario was just beginning, the murder of the chef happened. This incident is only a projection of a memory fragment from the Duke. This should be easy to comprehend: sometimes when we’re dreaming, we will dream of something that happened a long time ago. I didn’t intentionally wish for the reenactment of that incident, but it suddenly appeared unbidden in my dreams.

“This incident was actually one of the areas I couldn’t make sense of in the beginning.”

Gu Liang said, “I was under the presumption that the Duke had created a fantasy based on reality. But if we tried to use the fantasy alone to explain everything, the matter of the Princess killing the chef would appear incredibly abrupt in this story because there is no link to the other incidents and the Duke’s motivations for creating this fantasy.

“But if we correct the fantasy into a dreamscape, then everything will have its due explanation.

“Hence, for all the deductions hereafter, I believe that we need to thoroughly differentiate the incidents into two categories.

“The first category of incidents have a direct relation to the purposes that the Duke created this dreamscape for. The character designs, the developments of the story, are all strictly established by the Duke.

“The second category of incidents would be the incidents that appear illogical at first glance and bear no association to his motives. These are interferences in his dreams, like the chef’s accidental death for instance, or the odd changes in weather.

“After eliminating the interferences from the second category of incidents, everything else would be no different from reality even though we’re residing in a dreamscape, and it will suffice if we use the timeline and clues as a basis to deduce the murderer. The difficult part about this case is actually the elimination of the confounding factors.”

After listening to Gu Liang speak to this point, Li Xiao Yu was the first to speak.

As she was recording down the information in her notebook seriously, she asked Gu Liang: “I will summarise briefly. What you mean to say is, the Duke created a dreamscape for himself. There were a lot of characters in this script, which have been dictated by Duke in the dream. Our character designs and plots are in compliance with the trajectory and development he had ascribed. It’s just that by virtue of this being a dreamscape, there are some scenes that he didn’t expect he would dream up but they accidentally appeared, and it resulted in these incidents being unrelated to the story he had designed and they appear illogical for the most part.”

Gu Liang nodded. “Yes, that’s what I meant.”

After everyone heard Gu Liang’s speech, they sank into contemplation.

They combed through the story from the beginning to see if there were any discrepancies.

After a long while, Su Lan could not help but ask: “I have a question. If we’re in a dreamscape, how do you explain those exhibits? I’m referring to those from 300 years ago. For example, the servants’ diaries and the silver crosses. There has to be groundwork for it, right?”

Gu Liang pondered for a moment before he replied: “300 years ago, the Eastern Magician killed Aimeili. Not long after, all the inhabitants in the ancient castle disappeared in one night, and the whereabouts of the Duke was unknown. From what we know from Chief Mei’s story now, it’s possible that the Duke was sealed for 300 years.

“What happened on that night 300 years ago is something we can’t find out. But I am of the opinion that the exhibits that came from the castle 300 years ago, were exhibits that the Duke has investigated through a certain method, before he proceeded to etch them into his brain deeply and he subsequently restored them in his dreams.”

After giving a pause, Gu Liang gave his own question: “Do you still remember what the system said during the second round of voting and the latest public broadcast? The system kept saying that the Duke wanted us to help him find the person who killed Aimeili.

“This is a hint from the system. This incident is indeed one of the reasons why the Duke created this dreamscape.

“I am inclined to believe that after Chief Mei and Sister Mei killed Lady Rong, they unravelled the Duke’s seal. Thus, the Duke could borrow his own memories and magic to create this dreamscape.

“Inside the dreamscape, he restored all the exhibits and clues he could remember about that night 300 years ago before he brought us in. The first reason is that he wanted us to help him find the real murderer of Aimeili. He wanted to understand everything that had occurred that year.

“Of course, we are characters he created. In actuality, he was relying on his own memories to find the truth behind Aimeili’s death that year.”

Seeing no one had any objections for the time being, Gu Liang continued.

Gu Liang glanced at Yang Ye, saying: “That concludes Su Lan’s portion. I’ll be talking about Yang Ye’s story next. He believes himself to be Earl William. This is the character setting that the Duke gave him. 300 years ago, the Duke received the Earl’s letter and remembered that he would be arriving in two days. However, the Duke didn’t know about the true reason behind the Earl’s visit.

“The Duke did not understand the Earl enough, so he couldn’t give him too many traits, which is also why the various stories concerning the Earl, was made up for with his own story as a basis. For example, he fled here because he lost to the werewolves; or how he knew how to command the bats.”

Li Xiao Yu chose to speak at that moment. “I understand. I am a character he created as well. I believe I am Mother Ai, but the reality is that I don’t even know my own daughter’s birthday, and that’s because the Duke doesn’t know Confidant Ai’s birthday.”

Gu Liang nodded his head. “Precisely. He doesn’t know Confidant Ai at all. For the same reason, he is incapable of giving the character of Mother Ai more background stories.”

Li Xiao Yu tossed out another question: “But I have another inquiry, how did the Duke know of Confidant Ai?”

Gu Liang said: “The first possibility is that, his 300 year long slumber came with awareness, and he was capable of knowing the events that took place in this ancient castle.

“What can substantiate this point is that when I met that mysterious man in the rose garden this afternoon, the mysterious man said a sentence to me— Even an apathetic doll can give rise to a soul under a person’s care.

“Without considering who this mysterious man was metamorphosed by, the essence is that we are in the Duke’s dream, and the fact that someone in the dream is capable of saying these words means that the Duke himself is aware of this matter. Since he’s capable of knowing about the story between the Doll and Lady Rong, he would naturally know Confidant Ai.

“The second possibility is that after Chief Mei unravelled the Duke’s seal, the Duke stood up and wandered around. Maybe he went to the southern road and saw the corpses of Scumbag Yu, Designer Mei, and Chief Mei. Or perhaps those corpses hadn’t taken their last breaths then. And in the moment before Confidant Ai took her last breath, she was yelling, ‘please save me, I’m called Confidant Ai’ or something along those lines.

“But no matter which possibility it is, all of it is not important. When all is said and done, I can’t ascertain if the Duke was truly ‘resurrected’ by Chief Mei, nor can I ascertain if this dreamscape was only created after he was ‘resurrected’. The most important takeaway is the Duke’s impetus for creating this dreamscape.”

Gu Liang slowly said: “I previously mentioned that one of the reasons he created this dreamscape was because he wanted to find the truth behind Aimeili’s death. But I reckon that there are two other reasons as to why he created this dreamscape. In reality, the system has already hinted at them when it was announcing the rules and regulations.”

Li Xiao Yu’s eyes brightened. “I remember the system’s original words— The Lord Duke had a regret that lasted for 300 years in his heart, and a cherished desire he had hoped to fulfil for 300 years.”

Gu Liang nodded. “Yes. The second reason behind the Duke’s creation for this dreamscape is to make up for his regrets. Moreover, there is also a third reason— actualising his cherished desire.

“These two reasons correspond with the marriage between myself and Yang Ye, and the marriage between Mother Ai and Magnate Rong.

“300 years ago, the Duke fell in love with someone but he didn’t manage to have a good ending with her. This is the regret he wanted to make up for. Hence, the story he spun for me and Yang Ye to act out in this script was his and Aimeili’s story, albeit in a much shorter period of time. Although we had the same beginning, he hopes that we won’t have the same ending.

“His beloved Aimeili has died. He wanted to look for the reincarnated Aimeili and be together with her again, and this is his cherished desire, which is also the third reason behind the creation of the landscape.

“As a consequence of this, not only did he think of Aimeili reincarnating as Mother Ai – which is also Li Xiao Yu’s character – he also created a fiancé for Mother Ai, because this might be a concern he had 300 years ago— that even if he found Aimeili’s reincarnation, would she already have a lover?

“Therefore, the story among the three of them is, Li Xiao Yu had a change of affection, and after she broke up with her fiancé Chief Mei, she married Magnate Rong. And in the same vein, the deceased Magnate Rong always believed himself to be the bona fide Duke in this story.”

Li Xiao Yu could not refrain from asking: “I get it. But what is the foundation of this dream? For example, why am I wearing Confidant Ai’s face, and why does Earl William look like Scumbag Yu? Is it because the Duke walked to the southern road and saw our corpses after he was resurrected?

“If that’s the case, you still believe that you’re Actor Ming, how did you manage to enter this dream?

“And did Magnate Rong die in reality, hence his unswerving conviction that he is the Duke?”